1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates to the monitoring of printing systems and, more particularly, to a system for providing realtime status information for a printing system.
2. Description of the Related Art
The ability to instantly communicate the status of a printer to a user is limited by the text-based and two-dimensional graphical user interfaces used for communicating the printer status in the prior art. Problems are depicted in text format or diagram drawings; such depictions provide a generic representation of a problem and do not fully communicate the actual state of the printer. For example, if a paper jam occurs in the printing system, the printer operator must often reference a diagram displayed on a small screen that displays an iconic representation of the problem area without giving anything other than a general indication where in the printing system the particular area is located. This makes it very difficult to determine precisely where the printer jam has occurred or to diagnose the exact nature of the problem, and is particularly problematic in large, high-production printing systems that may occupy one or more entire room(s). Because these high-production printers are very expensive to run, quickly identifying and diagnosing printing problems and identifying the system state saves time and money by increasing printer up-time.
Accordingly, it would be desirable to have a printer monitoring system that provides a user with a more realistic depiction of the printing system being monitored and that can display actual views of problem areas correlated to the particular location in the overall printing system in which the problems are occurring.